


smoke burns

by jamesmadibabe



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Accidental First Date, Angst, Depression, Dorks in Love, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Healing, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Infidelity, M/M, Recovery, Sexuality Crisis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-25
Updated: 2018-08-25
Packaged: 2019-07-02 11:07:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,330
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15795255
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jamesmadibabe/pseuds/jamesmadibabe
Summary: "Y-You're not allowed to smoke in here."It's the first thing that tumbles out of Harry Potter's mouth when he walks into his office only to find his old rival, Draco Malfoy lounging on his desk like it's the most natural thing ever, shuffling through his papers, cigarette dangling out of his pink mouth like it's the most casual thing in the world. "Always articulate, Potter."or, malfoy tries to make amends and harry accidentally likes him





	smoke burns

**Author's Note:**

> hi i havent writen in a long time enjoy this old otp

"Y-You're not allowed to smoke in here."

It's the first thing that tumbles out of Harry Potter's mouth when he walks into his office only to find his old rival, Draco Malfoy lounging on his desk like it's the most natural thing ever, shuffling through his papers, cigarette dangling out of his pink mouth like it's the most casual thing in the world. "Always articulate, Potter." 

Harry's eyebrows bunch together, but he can't help the smile that starts at the corners of his lips because it's such a Malfoy thing to do, barging into his office going through his things. "This is a no smoking facility." _Wreck your lungs but not everyone else's_ is on the tip of his tongue, but he doesn't let it out. "What are you doing here?"

No one's seen or heard from Malfoy since the war ended. Admittedly, it took Harry a while to even figure out that the Slytherin was even  _gone_. He was always kind of... oblivious but especially after the last battle he was in such a dissociative state he had no idea what was going on. He'd assumed that Malfoy went off to live somewhere nice, maybe a beach, to ride out the hate he would get as a former death eater.

Wherever he went, it did him good. The last time Harry saw Malfoy, he was a seventeen year old punk with long limbs that he didn't know what to do with and not enough meat on his bones. Now, he's a lot more scarred, but he looks... fresher. Cleaner. Harry doesn't know how to explain it, but it looks good on him. Watching Malfoy put out the cigarette on his wrist makes Harry think he's less than stable, but he seems to be in a better place than the last time they saw each other.

"Nice to see you too, Potter." Malfoy drawls, holding out Harry's coat. "Let's get going."

"Wha-?"

"We're going out for dinner. I'll pay."

Cautiously, Harry grabs the coat. "That's not how you ask. Your parents couldn't afford to give you a tutor who taught you basic manners?"

"Please, Oh Great Potter, The Chosen One, Master of Death, Defender of the Wizarding World, The Boy Who Lived, Defeater of He Who Must Not Be Named, would you honor me by going out to dinner with me?" Draco sighs, holding out his hand.

It takes him a moment to realize that Malfoy's holding out his hand for him to take, and, with even more suspicion rising in his belly, he links arms with him. If Harry squints, he can still see his Dark Mark, surrounded by other scars that he's pretty sure weren't gained in battle. "I haven't finished my work."

"You're _Harry fuckin' Potte_ r. I'm sure they'll let you get off early."

Harry is beyond confused when Malfoy leads him to a muggle car, with no bells and whistles, that certainly can't fly. It's not even a fancy one, a run down tacky orange thing with torn seats. Well, run down isn't the word to use, more like _loved_ , but Harry doesn't associate anything involving love with Draco Malfoy. "You know how to use this thing?" Harry murmurs, eyes immediately locking on the Slytherin charms hanging on the rearview mirror, which hum pleasantly when a gust of cold air comes through. Some things never change.

"I don't think I would offer to bring you somewhere in it if I didn't know how to drive it," Malfoy says with a laugh completely absent of cruelty and _what the actual **fuck** is going on?_

"It's just... you don't strike me as the driving type."

One blond eyebrow quirks. "I like how cars... work. The sound they make is so... I don't know how to explain it - and I like feeling in control of it, knowing that I'm doing something so complex and yet so simple. I'm just turning a wheel and stepping on a pedal, but there's so much math - " Malfoy goes on and on, using words Harry can't understand, but it isn't in a braggy way. This is something Malfoy genuinely likes, and talking about it makes him happy. Come to think of it, back when they were in school, Malfoy never really... was interested in anything, The way his eyes light up is kind of cute, which, again, is _the last word_ he'd use to describe him.

"Well, it's more than that-"

"Cars are a muggle thing, and I used to not want to touch anything muggle-related," Malfoy says, sounding uninterested, "I'm older now, not a teenage prat. It's called character development. I'm sure you're different than you were back then."

Harry shuts the hell up after that, folding his hands in his lap and watches Malfoy drive. His eyebrows furrow and eyes narrow in concentration, but the corners of his lips turn up slightly. He drives smoothly, every move calculated, and everything about this is so foreign yet utterly _Malfoy_.

Has he changed since he was seventeen? Harry doesn't think he had some character arc where he found himself and became one with his past or what the fuck ever - he just got older and sadder. Some days, he feels like he's eleven, wide eyed and so completely utterly stupid, the next he feels like he's a hundred and eleven.

"You like the car?" 

"It's so..."

"Orange, I know," Malfoy finishes, eyes clouding over slightly with nostalgia. "I was going through this phase where I didn't want to touch anything that reminded me of my past so I picked the most shockingly ugly shade of orange I could find. It felt so good to paint it."

Harry supposes everyone reacted differently to the end of the war. Luna practiced self care, Neville grew more bold, Hermione tried to become more social and... Malfoy needed some time to think. Consider. He's always been better at thinking before acting than Harry is. "I wouldn't think Parkinson would let you drive her around in this thing."

"Pansy's a lesbian," Malfoy says, not sharply, just stating facts.

"Oh." Harry doesn't know if he should congratulate Malfoy on his friend getting the courage to come out, or console him after his breakup. Thinking back on it, the two were certainly _close_ , but shared no romantic chemistry. Harry had assumed they would stay together because, well, that's what purebloods do, especially the rich ones. They were lucky they at least liked each other - a lot of married couples hate to spend more than five minutes with each other.

"Are you still with the Weasley girl?"

"She has a name, you know. But yes, I am. We just had a little girl, Lily. She's radiant." The car is suddenly draped in an uncomfortable silence, and Malfoy refuses to meet his eyes, Still as mature as ever.

"But, yeah, Pansy hates the fucking color," Malfoy snorts a couple minutes later, breaking the silence as he parks in a spot. Harry is surprised to see a small muggle Italian restaurant, and even more shocked when Malfoy climbs out of the car and opens the door for him, holding out a hand.  _Fuck it,_  Harry thinks as he links harms with Draco Fucking Malfoy for the second time today.

It's even smaller on the inside, and Malfoy nods at the waiters like they're old friends and even smiles at one of the waitresses without malice and orders _fucking orange juice_. Quickly, this has gone from odd to suspicious. Harry squints at Malfoy, trying to figure out what's going on.

"If you think too hard you might hurt that little brain of yours, Potter," he says, sipping on his drink, and gesturing at his face. "Your nose is scrunching a lot. You do that when you're upset."

Harry blinks, hard. "This is a trap, right?" He mutters, sitting up in his chair. "Those waiters, they're spies, right? My sweet tea is spiked or something-" Draco Lucius Malfoy is _not_ sitting across from him making casual conversation, noticing his quirks. No. It's not possible.

Malfoy makes no attempt to calm him. only grins at him under lidded blue-grey eyes and watched him, amused. "Do I look particularly threatening to you?"

"Well I-" No, Harry wants to say, because Malfoy is slumped over in his chair and half of the buttons on his already stained white shirt aren't buttoned, but he can't bring himself to say it. Even though his expression is warm and he's idly flipping through the kid's menu, something feels wrong. All Harry can think of is being pushed in the halls, slurs being thrown at his best friends.

This isn't right. This _can_ 't be right.

"Potter," Malfoy says, amusement twinkling in his light hooded eyes, "You'd better hurry and look through the menu. When the waitress comes back to take our orders I don't want her to have to wait."

Harry shuts up, for now, his mind still buzzing because wow, was Malfoy just _considerate_? and did he just call him by his first name? He flips through the menu, slowly, not really reading anything. and orders a small spaghetti.

"Where've you been?" Harry asks, mouth full of spaghetti. He recalls seeing Malfoy's mum sulking around town doing business, but never his father. Most of the Slytherins, after fleeing in the middle of the battle (Of course, he's pretty sure all of them didn't flee, but that's how the story goes) have kept a low profile, but he's still seen some of them around - the Greengrass sisters flocking around in the park, Crabbe and Goyle (he never could tell them apart) picking up their twin daughters, Flint coaching a little league quidditch game with his husband, Oliver, Millicent at the Leaky, and even attended Blaise and Theodore's wedding - they tried to keep a low profile (sans Blaise, of course, his flair for the dramatic was relentless) but he still saw them around, living their lives.

(Though never as up close and as personal as in the seat across from him, happily gobbling on a calzone.)

Malfoy, however, went completely AWOL. There was no sign of him, no record, no letters, even Theodore, who worked close to Hermione, had confided in her that he had no idea where his friend was and was worried for him.

He bites his lip, thinking. "A little bit of everywhere, I think. Australia, Ireland, India, Antarctica, the Bahamas, I've seen all of the USA, I think." He smiles, twirling his straw. "Florida was my favorite. Everything was so fucking bizarre there."

Harry's been to Florida once or twice - when he was doing his victory tour, going around to the families of the children who died during the second wizarding war, and a couple of them were spread around the States. It was a very peculiar awful country. "When?"

"I left right after you saved me. I didn't know that you had died or not died or came back to life or died again or that I was the owner or the wand or I was God and Pansy killed you or ate you I don't know it was all very confusing," He answers, waving his hand dismissively, as if his ex-girlfriend being an almost murderer at sixteen wasn't a big deal. "I took off - the first place I went was to Pansy's to take all of her makeup and galleons, and then I swung by Blaise's and took all of his makeup but I really only went for his muggle money because he was the only person I knew who would have muggle cash because he wasn't really a supremacist, he just fucking hated everyone, y'know?"

He never thought the whole thing was that complicated - he just assumed Malfoy went on a little joyride on his daddy's dime, not that he stole from his friends and shit. Sure, Draco was a bully, but he never struck Harry as a _thief_. "What happened next?"

"So I'm seventeen, dirty, depressed and lonely, surrounded by broken glass because Blaise's family isn't dumb enough to leave their house unprotected and it takes everything in me not to saw into my arm, not that that's anything that's anything unfamiliar to me - you can see." Draco laughs, but it's hollow. Unsure what to do, Harry swallows hard and tries not to look at the scars. "I had a fortune to my name but that didn't really matter because everywhere I went to I would always be the one who helped drive us to war, so I decided to take refuge with the muggles. I discovered a sort of... well, fascination, with the ways that they've advanced with magic. It's so strange that these people go their whole lives without knowing that something is missing, without knowing how... incomplete they are, you know? How could they be happy when they had so little?"

Growing up with muggles, Harry never really thought of it that way. Sure, sometimes he wondered how people got by without the safety net and convenience of magic, but he'd gotten used to living both ways.

"The pinnacle of human existence is ignorance, Harry. Forget muggles being unaware of wars wizards are fighting, what about the wars that are going on across their shores that they ignore?" Draco's entire face is red, twisted, Harry can tell this is something he's passionate about. Draco takes a moment to calm himself down before continuing, "Sorry, that's not what I was going with that. What I mean is that I had to learn to live with less. And it was good."

"Everyone thinks that I've been on some sort of vacation, fucking around. I made every excuse, convinced myself that I was doing the right thing, but at the end of the day I knew that I was just hiding. It'd been more than, what, fifteen years? and my mother was eating herself up the entire time. I thought I should make amends. Well, not amends, I don't expect you to forgive me, but, at least, I wanted to put myself out there, you know?"

"I forgive you," Harry blurts without thinking about it, and Draco's eyes widen. "I mean, you were, uh, going through a lot, and I know your dad-"

"Everyone goes straight to my dad when making excuses for me," Draco interrupts, playing with the stray of his orange juice. "I know he comes off as this big intimating asshole, but that's the thing. He's not abusive. He's... a good father. He listened to everything I had to say and would give me anything I wanted. He had his prejudices, of course, and it was expected of me to take his place, but I knew that he would have died trying to keep me away from Voldemort if I said the word. My mother didn't raise me to be a bully, either. I just..."

Draco stops abruptly, something changing in his expression, and he suddenly hops up, holding out his hand. "Sorry for going on that little rant there, my whole thing is just that I never shut the fuck up about myself. Wanna dance?"

As if on autopilot, he takes Draco's pale hand and lets him lead him away from the tables. The new information sinks into his brain as he watches Draco shimmy to some meaningless pop song in the muggle restaurant with a couple of people looking. He doesn't realize he himself has been dancing until the song switches to something slower but still ultimately meaningless. Draco stops, hesitating, blue-grey eyes searching his face.

_Fuck it_ , Harry thinks, placing his hands delicately on Draco's scarily think shoulders. The other holds his hips as they move slowly to the music, breathing hard. Harry wants to look away, but something about his eyes make him impossible to look away from. His eyes seem depthless, eyelashes going on for what seems like forever, his lips pink, strangely tantalizing. They move as one but somehow uniquely, having a conversation in the way they sigh or their hips shift or how Draco leads him around.

Harry tries to bring thought back into his static filled brain, placing his head on Draco's chin. It's a mistake - it only brings their bodies closer. He can make out the bones jutting out of Draco's skin, the welts on his chest, his fast heart, the heat coming off of his red ears. "I've always thought you were pretty," Harry whispers into his ear, because he's Harry James _fucking_ Potter and he's never thought anything through before he said it.

Draco jerks his head away abruptly, and Harry is mesmerized by the way that his hands slowly move away, his fingertips sparking lighting on his skin. "I can drive you home." His tone makes it clear that it isn't just an offer, it's a demand, and he throws a hundred dollar bill, grabbing Harry's coat. Even though his face is red and arms shaking, clearly flustered, he is slow in wrapping the jacket around his shoulders, fiddling with the zipper.

 

Harry follows the taller man, seemingly walking on air, stumbling. He has no fucking clue what is going on or what he's feeling. Maybe at some point he suspected he wasn't completely straight, but Draco fucking Malfoy of all people... All the extra information baffles him and makes him feel guilty at the same time. Sure, he's been doing his part here and there, helping the families of victims grieve, but other than that he hasn't done shit to help the community or his own family. It seems like everyone was growing and changing for the better and he's still stuck, forever the same wide-eyed punk with a hero complex and no filter.

He doesn't realize he's been silent for the entire ride until Draco comes to a stop outside his house, his Slytherin charm jiggling to a stop. He turns to say goodbye, but Draco is determinedly staring out the window, mouth fixed in a line, a bead of sweat trickling down his forehead. Harry's hand hovers over the knob for a while. His wife and his kids, one of which is a fucking infant, are right on the other side of the door, and yet he's thinking of...

Before he can think better of it, he gently places his fingertips on Draco's sharp chin, making him look at him. And, just like in the movies, he kisses the troubled skinny white boy in his car at night.

 

* * *

 

"How bad would it be if I liked a boy?" 

Ron is shocked to silence, and Hermoine bites her lip, thinking it over. Luna, however, immediately responds even though Neville is frantically signaling for her to not say anything, "It would be very bad considering the fact that you're a grown man."

" _What_?" Harry squeaks, so surprised he accidentally grinds into his finger with a butter knife. "No, no, he's a grown man."

"It be very fucking bad, considering the fact that you're married to my sister," Ron says, suddenly regaining his ability to speak, "and I would have to beat the shit out of you, you fu-"

"I didn't _mean_ to like him, you know."

"Jesus Christ, Ronald, he's having a sexuality crisis, not playing tonsil hockey under his wife's nose," Neville groans, resting his head on Luna's shoulder. Harry conveniently doesn't mention the fact that he did kiss Draco only feet away from where Ginny was probably watching cartoons with Albus.

Hermoine places a hand on his arm, silencing him without having to say a word. "I think it would be a very complicated thing that you would have to discuss with Ginny." She pauses. "And whatever you decide, we're your friends and we support you."

"Thank you, Hermoine," Harry says, moved, reaching across the table to hold her hands.

"Yes, we support everything you do, unless it involves getting in bed with bo-"

" _Thank you_ , Luna," Harry says, significantly less moved.

 

* * *

Now all he has to do is figure out what the fuck he's doing.

**Author's Note:**

> my tumblr is devilstit. you should definitely hmu, comrade
> 
> also keep in mind that i crave validation xoxoxo


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